


Exodus

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Armin dies, Beast Titan Erwin, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, Slow Burn, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 04:49:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19100065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In an alternate universe, Levi captures the Beast Titan and rescues Erwin before his demise, transforming him into the new Beast Titan, but unfortunately condemning heroic Armin to his death. This is that alternate universe.





	Exodus

**Author's Note:**

> This is my way of grieving Erwin's demise. Also, I wanted to make my own story about what could have happened had Erwin survived and Levi had captured Zeke. I haven't planned this story out in full prior to writing the first chapter - I'm pretty much winging it - so I am assuming a lot of liberties are going to be taken with canon events and characterisation after the battle in Shiganshina is over. 
> 
> I have a lot of feelings about the current manga arc and Armin's role in it. Rather than start raging and ranting, I wanted to take my feelings and make something productive come from them. If my story has a happy ending, I just want Erwin and Levi alive to see it together. This, unfortunately, means taking Armin away from Eren and Mikasa. 
> 
> Let's just see where this wild ride takes us, yeah?

_If I can just save one person, that’s all I need. Just one._ Levi closes his eyes and an image of Erwin appears, smiling, content, about to sacrifice his dream and his life for the cause. The ultimate sacrifice that this asshole—he opens his eyes, glares down at the Beast Titan who still has a sword through his face and sticking out of his eye, an expression of pure terror contorting his damaged face—forced him to make. That’s all the encouragement that Levi needs.

He rips out the man from his titan and latches an anchor onto a nearby titan to swing out, blood and gore spraying in all directions as the man’s legs are pulled free from the Beast’s nape. He detaches his sword from the handgrip. The blond man is howling as best as he can through the metal obstruction but no words can be formulated. Levi doesn’t know what kind of powers this asshole has, but he’s not going to give him the chance to use any of them.

The gas sputters and Levi drops half a foot as he heads for the mountain of carnage. He curses under his breath. Getting to and then fighting the Beast Titan has almost wiped him clean out of gas. If he runs out he knows he’s going to have to loot one of the bodies for their gas. It’s a disgusting yet necessary thought. The remaining titans behind them stay obediently in formation, not moving an inch, their eyes set upon the wall in a stupor. As long as they do that, Levi has a chance.

As he flies over the bodies, bile rises in his throat. There’s so many severed limbs and decapitated heads that he can’t figure out which body part belongs to whom. He had listened to their screams and watched them shoot signal flares, but after his initial apology he hadn’t had the stomach to watch them ride out to their deaths. He had made his promise to them. Now he intends on keeping it.

The man is wriggling and writhing in Levi’s strong grip, perhaps knowing what’s coming for him. It’s not even a fraction of the terror and helplessness that he deserves. If Erwin is dead— _please, please let him not be dead_ —then Levi will find someone alive and inject them.

This shit, it ends _today_.

“Why? Why? Why the fuck are _you_ alive, of all people?” he hears someone scream, the voice coming from behind him. Heart in his throat, Levi swivels around. There’s a recruit down there with a blade drawn, hovering downwards over a body. “Are you a coward too? Are cowards the only ones that are allowed to live? Or are you a demon? Damn you, Erwin Smith!”

 _Erwin._ Yanking his hooks back out of a crumbling house, Levi shoots them at the ground and swoops. The recruit looks up with wide eyes filled with tears, his face slack with terror, and takes a step back from Erwin as Levi lands and approaches.

“Erwin is alive?” Levi asks on a shaky breath.

“A rock blew through his side and scrambled his insides,” the recruit mutters, angrily swiping tears from his eyes. “We’re the only ones that lived.”

“Then help me get him ready for injection.” Levi drops the Beast Titan to the ground. “That’s the Beast Titan. Drag him a few feet away, then keep an eye in case any of the titans make a move.”

The recruit’s eyes snap to the Beast Titan. A flurry of emotions passes through his eyes like a flock of birds past a window, and he settles on fury. “That’s the Beast Titan? That’s the cunt that _fucking did this to all of us_?” He swipes his hand out to encompass the destruction and the dead.

“Yes.”

With a wild cry the recruit lunges forward and stomps repeatedly on every inch of the Beast Titan he can reach, steering clear of the sword still protruding from his mouth. When that isn’t satisfying enough, he straddles the Beast Titan and punches. Punches, punches, punches, until his knuckles are bleeding and his angry shouts become one continuous tortured howl.

“Hey!” Levi hauls the recruit back by his collar. “We don’t have time for that now! Get it together. Do you want the Beast Titan to escape?”

“He killed…he killed them all…”

“And now we’re going to kill him. Pull yourself together.”

The recruit mops at his eyes, shoves his red hair back from his ruddy face. “Okay.”

Levi watches as the recruit grabs the shifter by his hair and drags him further down the way, heedless to the debris littering the field. Satisfied that the job is getting done properly, he turns back to Erwin and pulls out the serum box and readies the shot.

Injecting someone with the serum and transforming them is altogether a disturbingly simple process. The fact that a human can become one of these monsters so easily would haunt his nightmares if he slept long enough to have any.

As soon as Erwin’s body lights up with the tell-tale signs of transformation, Levi shoots his anchors into the nearest building, half destroyed from rocks, to get out of the way. He hears the recruit do the same. Levi swings behind Erwin and puts distance between them, keeping his eyes on the titans still standing in place. Then his eyes catch something moving in the distance.

It’s the other titan shifter. Having abandoned the boulder it had been dutifully rolling into place, it’s running toward them, desperation contorting its hideously elongated face. Levi’s down to his last pair of blades, not enough gas to fight this titan and get over the wall.

The Beast Titan shifter begins to scream anew, garbled from the sword shoved down his throat, and a quick glance over reveals that Erwin—seven metres, blond, with eyes too big and a mouth too small for his face—has already grabbed him, crushing several ribs in his tight grip. Erwin lifts him slowly—way too slowly—to his mouth. Levi turns away.

“War Chief Zeke!” the quadrupedal titan shifter screams.

But it’s way too late; Levi hears the moment Erwin bites down and rips the Beast Titan shifter—Zeke—in half. Bones and cartilage are torn through and twisted off, followed by a hideous chewing noise that sets Levi’s teeth on edge. The ground shakes as Erwin’s titan form falls to the ground, knocking free any debris caught along the ruined houses to create a cacophony of noise.

The quadrupedal titan screams bloody murder. “You’ll pay for that one!”

“I think he’s coming out!” shouts the recruit.

“Grab him and scale the wall now!” Levi yells back.

The quadrupedal titan is closing in on them fast. He anchors into Erwin’s titan form and lands near the nape, grabbing Erwin’s unconscious form and ripping him free. In the disintegrating titan hand is the lower half of Zeke, pelvic bone sticking out. Levi scales the wall with the recruit in tow. The quadrupedal titan stops at the titan and stares at the carnage. Then it pivots way too neatly for someone with its bone structure and runs the length of the wall and out of sight.

Levi turns to the recruit. “Do you have a full tank?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Then switch canisters with me and give me half your blades. If that thing comes back I need to be able to fight. I need you to keep an eye on Commander Erwin until he wakes up. Can you do that?”

The recruit looks lost for half a second, as if his mind is scrambling to put the pieces of the last hour together. Levi grabs him by the shoulder and gives him a little shake. He empathises with the recruit but now is not the time.

“Can you do that?” he repeats.

Shaking his head as if to clear it, the recruit’s expression hardens and he nods. “I can.”

It takes all of twenty seconds for the exchanging of gas canisters. The recruit’s canisters are nearly full, having been tasked with taking care of the horses instead of fighting titans. Levi knows he’ll have to be more sparing with this one; he won’t be able to exchange with anyone else.

A red signal flare shoots into the sky from below. Levi whips around. Standing on a house with half its roof missing are at least four people, one of whom is lying down. Nearby is the hulking, disintegrating mass of what has to be the remains of the Colossal Titan. Something is wrong down there. Cursing, Levi reaches inside his jacket and pulls out a signal flare and hands it to the recruit, who flinches as if expecting it to come alive and bite his fingers off.

“If you see the quadrupedal titan heading your way, fire this and I’ll come back,” says Levi. “Stay up here; your only job now is protecting Commander Erwin’s life.”

“Yes, sir.”

Levi jumps off the wall and goes to check out what has gone wrong on this side of the wall.

Out of everything he had been imagining, the reality of the situation is far, far worse.

“He’s breathing! He’s alive!” he hears Eren shouting as he lands. Eren’s kneeling over a black, smoking shape. It takes Levi a few seconds to understand that the mass is a person, burned to a crisp and entirely unrecognisable. “Come on, Armin, please—please keep breathing!”

Off to one side, Mikasa clutches her head as she cries, legs trembling until they give out from underneath her. The other body is that of the Colossal Titan in human form—Bertholdt Hoover, Levi recalls distantly—missing all of his limbs.

“Yes! Yes, Armin, keep it up!” Levi must have made a sound, for Eren whips around to face him, and his face collapses in relief. “Quick, Captain—please give Armin the titan serum! We can transform him and have him eat Bertholdt!”

Swallowing past a painful lump in his throat, Levi whispers, “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

In a flash, Eren is on his feet and pushing into Levi’s personal space, tears of grief and horror running down his dirt-streaked face. “Why not?”

The metallic shing of a blade being withdrawn momentarily captures Levi’s attention; he glances behind him to see Mikasa slowly advancing on him.

“ _Give us the serum!_ ” Eren yells. “Weren’t your orders to give the serum to someone on the brink of death—someone who needs it to _live_? Who could possibly need it more than _Armin_? He’s _dying_ , Captain! He sacrificed his life and now he’s dying! _Inject him_ with the serum! _Please_!”

“He’s dying,” Mikasa whimpers.

“I wish more than anything that I could give you the serum,” says Levi, his heart heavy with remorse, and knows that no matter what these two says to him now he’ll forgive them for it. He knows better than anyone what grief does to someone. “But when I captured the Beast Titan, I found Commander Erwin near death. I injected him and fed the Beast Titan to him. There’s nothing anyone can do for Armin now. I’m sorry.”

Behind him he hears people land on the roof, listens to their whispered words of shock as they witness the carnage. All the while Eren stares, dumbstruck, at Levi, as if he cannot fathom what he’s just been told. Until it sinks in.

A scream wrenches its way out of Eren’s mouth as he spins on unsteady legs and collapses next to Armin, gathering his charcoal body into his arms. Mikasa’s shoulder rams into Levi as she sprints over to them, wrapping her arms around Eren and Armin, wailing.

Levi backs away from them, then turns away. This is not his moment to intrude on. Jean and Conny, with Sasha’s unconscious body draped over his back, hurries over to kneel beside the trio but they don’t touch, and they don’t speak. They watch and grieve in silence as Armin fights for every breath around the mouthfuls of blood he spits up.

Hange is there. She’s bruised and bloody, one eye bandaged, but she’s whole and alive. A balm that Levi didn’t know he needed. When she puts a hand to Levi’s shoulder, it grounds him.

“What happened?”

“Debrief can wait for later. Where is the Armoured Titan? And what do you propose we do with him?” Levi kicks at Bertholdt Hoover’s unconscious body, plumes of steam rising into the air.

“Kill him,” says Hange simply. “The quadrupedal titan already took Reiner away before I can kill him. Unless you think we should have Eren or—or Erwin eat Bertholdt, the simplest solution is killing him.”

They look over at Eren. There’s no way they can ask him to transform and eat Bertholdt in his condition. In fact, there’ll be no asking anything of him for a while.

“Erwin’s still unconscious,” says Levi. “Just kill Bertholdt. The less enemies that make it out of here alive, the better off we’ll all be.”

“Understood.”

“Are you able to handle things here? I need to get back to Erwin; I left a recruit with him. I don’t trust that the quadrupedal titan won’t come back.”

“I’ve got it covered. Go on.”

Levi anchors into the wall. Just as his feet leaves the ground, he hears Eren scream, “HE’S DEAD!” and closes his eyes momentarily. But he has a job to do and he can’t stop now for grief. He leaves them to it and goes back up the wall to Erwin.


End file.
